Greeley-Evans schools get down to recycling business

Jaelyn Montoya, 9, left, walks with her partner Madison Parker, 9, walk with a bag full of recycling as Matt Throop, District Engineer for Greeley-Evans School District 6, follows behind them during their weekly clean up Friday morning at Monfort Elementary. With the help of Throop and other faculty and staff the Green Team works to make the district schools more environmentally friendly.

Dante Hughes, 8, pushes a cart loaded with recycling Friday morning as he goes through the hallways of Monfort Elementary. Students with the Green Team comb through the school looking for recycling bins that are full and then collect all the recyclables they find and cart them off to the recycling bin.

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The fourth-grader at Monfort Elementary School is not shy when it comes to explaining the importance of recycling.

“You can reuse, reduce and recycle,” the 8-year-old repeated from something he’s heard over and over again in school.

“If you don’t, this place will be full of hundreds of trash,” he said, following up with his own opinion on the matter. “This would be the trash planet. And who wants to live on a trash planet? You’d be swimming in trash.”

Fortunately for Dante, there are others at several schools in Greeley-Evans School District 6 under the direction of Matt Throop, the district engineer, that believe just like he does. It’s been just over two years ago that Throop worked with the Greeley Central High School Green Cats club to start the Green Team, a group of volunteer teachers, students and parents throughout the district that work to recycle what they can.

“I have to give the greatest credit to the kids over at Greeley Central,” Throop said. “Anytime you get a kid-led group, they really take control, and it’s teaching everyone around them thy should be responsible and that’s a great thing.”

Not all schools have to participate, and each school may run the program how it sees fit.

At Monfort, each classroom has blue recycle bins to collect paper and plastic throughout the week. On Fridays, students and parents come into school before the day starts to walk around and collect everything in the bins and then send them off to Waste Management to be recycled.

Being more earth friendly is something Throop said he is trying to make a habit throughout the district.

“Honestly, you can recycle 90 percent of things,” he said. “Believe it or not, but the more you recycle, the less it costs.”

Jennifer Sheldon, Monfort principal, said credit for her school getting involved belongs with retired physical education teacher Lizzy Ginger. Ginger, who retired earlier this year after more than 20 years in the district and 13 at Monfort, is the one who got her students interested, motivated and involved in the project, Sheldon said.

“She really wanted kids to create habits from the beginning,” she said. “If we can teach that stuff at school and get them started here, they will take it home with them.”

Throop said the district is taking more steps all the time to being more energy efficient, including having nearly 20 schools now with Energy Star ratings and the new middle school will be the first LEED certified school in district, which is a designation given buildings that meet certain guidelines for energy efficiency.

For Dante this is just the beginning.

“We don’t do cans, but I want them to start doing cans,” he said. “And we used to recycle at home, but we don’t anymore. I want to recycle everywhere.”

Sherrie Peif covers education for The Tribune. If you have an idea for a feature, contact Sherrie at (970) 392-5632, by email at speif@greeleytribune.com. Follow her on twitter @sherriepeif.